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Hasegawa’s big 1:72 Macross Queadluun Rau model kit spotted in Yodobashi

Yesterday I went to Yodobashi Camera in Utsunomiya with my friend Lou who is visiting Japan. Here is me in the Macross section of the model department. This is the first time seeing the new Q-Rau model in-person. Wow, what a big box! I have enough Yodobashi points that I could have walked out of the store with this kit without paying for it, but unfortunately I have to buy my daughter a crappy Chromebook for her schoolwork and I will need to use those points on that instead.

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Using WaifuXL to clean up and enhance anime images

A handy website called WaifuXL uses AI or something to clean up, color-correct, upscale, and enhance anime images. Above left is a very old picture of Madoka from Kimagure Orange Road I’ve had since high school. It’s a very low-resolution picture. To the right is a 4x enhanced version, courtesy of WaifuXL. (I never use the term “waifu” and it’s pretty stupid, but this website is pretty cool.)

Linna from Bubblegum Crisis. Look how blurry and low-res the original is.

Nadia taking a shower. You can see how it clears up the dithering considerably.

Nadia taking a nap. It really sharpened up the picture.

Nadia’s wedding.

Nadia wedding dress.

Komillia from Macross 2036. The original looks blurry in comparison.

Plus it works on non-character images. Look at how it cleaned up this image of a Macross Valkyrie prepping for takeoff:

This is a nice tool. Apparently it does not work on non-anime images well.

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Arii 1:100 scale Macross Super Valkyrie VF-1S plamo box scan

Arii’s 1:100 scale model of Roy Fokker’s VF-1S. Well, actually Hikaru is piloting it at this point in the story. It’s rather nice box art, but notice that the thruster pod in the center is facing the wrong direction! Oops. The decals for this kit do not seem to be usable. I am thinking I might build this up as Jetfire from Transformers instead. I have plenty of Autobot emblem decals to use.

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Arii’s old 1:100 Heavy Missile Regult battle pod plamo from Macross complete

I had posted a scan of the box art in an earlier post.

I completed the old 1:100 Arii Heavy Missile Regult plamo this week. Surface detail is in some ways better than the old Imai kit, with how there is molded detail for the lights on the head for this smaller Arii kit, whereas Imai’s larger Regult model only provides decals to represent those lights. As it is though, proportions on the missile pods is off and makes the model look a bit awkward because they are too large. I drilled out the cannons because those parts instead had protruding ends rather than resembling actual gun barrells. I used Wave’s H-Eyes parts for lenses and Kotobukiya’s M.S.G. verniers for the thrusters. This kit has molded detail for the lights on the feet, but they protrude way too much. I cut them off and used Wave’s lenses instead. The mono eye is simply molded into the face of the pod, so I first painted it silver and then clear red to give it more of a lens look.

I used Mr. Color 323 Light blue and 311 Gray for the white parts. The gray was a mixture of 32 Dark Gray and 72 Intermediate Blue. the decals were still usable after all these years. They were a bit yellowed, but I taped them to my window for several days to bleach them. They went on fairly well. I have a pre-order for the 1:72 Hasegawa version of this kit, which will be released after the first of September.

The proportions on the Regult itself seem fine, but Arii made the missile pods a bit too tall. It makes the model look a bit awkward. Also, there is no ball socket articulation with the cannons. They must be glued into place. I might add a bit of weathering to this. One thing I need to do is repair the knee joint. I had to replace the broken piece with brass rod, but the 2-part epoxy putty I used turned out to be soft because I didn’t make it the proper ratio. I might try polyester putty instead.